Title
Moral Expansiveness Around the World: The Role of Societal Factors Across 36 Countries
Date Issued
01 January 2022
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Kirkland K.
Crimston C.R.
Jetten J.
Rudnev M.
Acevedo-Triana C.
Amiot C.E.
Ausmees L.
Baguma P.
Barry O.
Becker M.
Bilewicz M.
Boonyasiriwat W.
Castelain T.
Costantini G.
Dimdins G.
Finchilescu G.
Fischer R.
Friese M.
Gastardo-Conaco M.C.
Gómez Á.
González R.
Goto N.
Halama P.
Jiga-Boy G.M.
Kuppens P.
Loughnan S.
Markovik M.
Mastor K.A.
McLatchie N.
Novak L.M.
Onyekachi B.N.
Peker M.
Rizwan M.
Schaller M.
Suh E.M.
Talaifar S.
Tong E.M.W.
Torres A.
Turner R.N.
Van Lange P.A.M.
Vauclair C.M.
Vinogradov A.
Wang Z.
Yeung V.W.L.
Bastian B.
Publisher(s)
SAGE Publications Inc.
Abstract
What are the things that we think matter morally, and how do societal factors influence this? To date, research has explored several individual-level and historical factors that influence the size of our ‘moral circles.' There has, however, been less attention focused on which societal factors play a role. We present the first multi-national exploration of moral expansiveness—that is, the size of people’s moral circles across countries. We found low generalized trust, greater perceptions of a breakdown in the social fabric of society, and greater perceived economic inequality were associated with smaller moral circles. Generalized trust also helped explain the effects of perceived inequality on lower levels of moral inclusiveness. Other inequality indicators (i.e., Gini coefficients) were, however, unrelated to moral expansiveness. These findings suggest that societal factors, especially those associated with generalized trust, may influence the size of our moral circles.
Start page
305
End page
318
Volume
14
Issue
3
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Ética
Antropología
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85133634722
Source
Social Psychological and Personality Science
ISSN of the container
19485506
Sponsor(s)
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Brock Bastian was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) (grant number DP200101446), Steve Loughnan was supported by the Philip Leverhulme Prize, Roberto González was supported by the Center for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (ANID/FONDAP 15130009) and the Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Research (ANID/FONDAP 15110006), Nobuhiko Goto was supported by the JSPS KAKENHI (grant number 19KK0063), Girts Dimdins was supported by the Latvian Council of Science (grant number lzp-2018/1-0402), Michal Bilewicz was supported by the Polish National Science Center Grant Sonata Bis (grant number UMO-2017/26/E/HS6/00129). and Maksim Rudnev was supported by a research project implemented as part of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE University).
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus